- Season two of Stranger Things just started shooting.
The creative team behind the show
just started spilling the details,
so let's crank the hype up to eleven.
(groans)
I know, me too, on Nerdist News.
(ambient electronic music)
Stranger Things season two
will finally bring us back to Hawkins, Indiana next year,
and since next year is just a couple of months away,
production is finally starting right meow,
which means all sorts of cool new details
are spilling out from set,
giving us a clearer picture than ever
of what Stranger Things season two will be.
First off, some new casting announcements this week
revealed that two big 80s movie icons
will be moving to Hawkins next season,
The Goonies Sean Astin will play Bob Newby,
the nerdy manager at the local RadioShack
who went to high school with Joyce Byers and Sheriff Hopper.
We'd guess our geeky kid heroes
will see Bob as a mentor figure,
and hey, maybe he'll even become the new Poppa Byers
if our Hopper slash Joyce fan-shipping doesn't pan out.
And then there's everyone's favorite
Weyland-Yutani shill, Paul Reiser.
Reiser's addition to the cast seems pitch perfect
since the Duffers have been comparing season two
of their show to Mad About You.
Wait, I misread that, to James Cameron sequels,
and it sounds like Reiser will be playing a similar role
to his smarmy Aliens character.
He'll be the high ranking Department of Energy
cleaner-upper Dr. Owens,
who comes to Hawkins to sweep up the mess left behind
by Matthew Modine's Brenner.
But will Dr. Owens be our season two big bad?
Well it'd certainly be on theme
as producer Shawn Levy told Collider
at a recent screening of his film Real Steel,
"Will Byers was in that upside down for a while,
"so season two is about this determined desire
"to return to normalcy in Hawkins,
"in the Byers family, in that group of friends
"and it's the struggle to reclaim normalcy
"and maybe the impossibility of it."
It would seem that extends to the Department of Energy,
who've opened a door to a world
that they're gonna have a real hard time closing.
And while the jury is still out
on whether anyone in Hawkins will find normalcy
by the end of season two, let alone ever,
it sounds like the Stranger Things team
is already looking to future seasons
With Levy confirming that he and the Duffers
have already started outlining the third.
Good call, since the mysterious ending of season one
left more than a few of us wondering
just how many answers the Duffers had,
and how many they'd yet to come up with.
So all told, Stranger Things season two
sounds like it's coming along nicely,
but we have to ask because we've been burned before,
True Detective,
has the Stranger Things team learned the right lessons
from season one's success.
Yes, we got a kick out of the 80s nostalgia
and pop culture references,
but that's not what kept us
binging our way through the series.
What really made us fall for the show
were the well-drawn heartfelt characters
like Hopper and Eleven,
and the real sense of danger mixed in
with that classical tone of sci-fi wonder and discovery.
We just don't wanna see season two reheat
season ones leftovers
with similar villains and even more references
to stuff like Goonies and Aliens,
we wanna see the characters we've come to love
grow as they experience a new story
with heightened stakes, even Roman, a new character
who Netflix has described as
"an emotionally damaged, magnetic young woman
"who suffered a great loss as a child,
"who doesn't live in Hawkins
"but is mysteriously connected
"to the supernatural events at the lab."
Sounds like little more than a grown up Eleven,
which could feel like a retread,
or it could make for an interesting addition to the show.
Jury is still out, but for one of only a handful
of new characters,
Roman definitely sounds more familiar than we'd expect.
Lucky for us, the Duffers seem to have
the same goal in mind,
lauding those James Cameron sequels
for approaching their stories from fresh angles,
but the familiarity here so far
has us just a teensy bit worried.
We can't wait to hear more,
and most of all to hear how exactly Eleven is managing
to survive on Eggos alone.
I mean, we all love frozen waffles,
but they're only kind of a food.
She's gotta be dying of malnutrition.
(laughing)
I mean, she's gotta be,
but what do you guys think?
Do you like the sound of Stranger Things season two so far?
Are you into these new characters?
What kinds of threats
do you think Hawkins will face next year?
Let's discuss.
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